“And I am going on,” Jeanne declared.
“I want to see where we come out on the beach.”

“This way, then,” Cecil said. “You
need not be afraid to walk upright. The roof
is six feet high all the way. You must tread
carefully, though. There are plenty of holes and
stones about.”

The Princess and Forrest disappeared. Jeanne,
with her skirts held high in one hand, and an electric
torch in the other, followed Cecil slowly along the
gloomy way. The walls were oozing with damp,
glistening patches, like illuminated salt stains, and
queer fungi started out from unexpected places.
Sometimes their footsteps fell on the rock, awaking
strange echoes down the gallery. Sometimes they
sank deep into the sand. Cecil looked often behind,
and once held out his hand to help his companion over
a difficult place. At last he paused, and she
heard him struggling to turn a key in a great worm-eaten
door on their right.

“This is the room,” he explained, “where
they held their meetings, and where the stuff was
hidden. It was used for more than twenty years,
and the Customs’ people never seemed to have
had even an inkling of its existence.”

He pushed the door open with difficulty. They
found themselves in a gloomy chamber, with vaulted
roof and stone floor. A faint streak of daylight
from an opening somewhere in the roof, partially lit
the place. Here, too, the walls were damp and
the odour appalling. There were some fragments
of broken barrels at one end, and an oak table in
the middle of the floor. Jeanne looked round and
shivered.